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Fore! Fine dining with a side order of golf at Vinothec Compass
A casual fine dining restaurant on a golf driving range? Let’s get wood at Vinothec Compass.
The grass next to the restaurant appears to be sprouting mushrooms at a remarkable rate, but you really don’t want to pick these. They
are in fact golf balls, and as Michael Caine noted in the film Zulu, there are ‘fahsands of ‘em’.
From the two tiered stand at N1 Golf London, scores of golfers are relentlessly whacking balls out into the sky and the only thing stopping them from sailing on to land in Canary Wharf, glistening like a mini Dubai in the fast setting sun, are giant nets.
I have a go, my only golf experience up to this point being Crazy Golf (if you want to know how to get around the miniature windmill in two shots, just ask me). This is not enough it seems to handle a real golf club as I swipe wildly into the air twice and then hit the ground on the third go with enough force to almost pop my shoulder out of its socket.
One of the many golf pros on standby steps in, adjusting my stance and showing me how to bend my legs, my arms and how to follow through. Amazingly on my next attempt there is a solid connection and the ball arcs outward like a bullet in a most satisfying way. I can see how golfers can get hooked on the feeling.
Anyone can have a go, N1 charges £ 12 for 120 balls (£10 off-peak) or 60 for £6 and there are worse ways to spend a lunch hour or early evening, but it sure makes you hungry. Fortunately there is the 19th hole, Vinothec Compass a new restaurant that’s a long way from the traditional clubhouse with its coronation chicken sandwiches and Jaguar Mk II driving men ordering a G&T for the little lady.
The restaurant is airy, canteen-like which goes with the ‘casual fine dining’ label it has given itself. People today, we are told, don’t like fine dining, have a phobia about napkins, a fear of tablecloths and a visceral hatred for waiters who glide instead of walking.
On the other hand we don’t all want to eat American Casual Dining, or expensive junk food as it’s better known, all the time. So what lies between? Well step forward Vinothec Compass.
Arnaud Compass, a geographer and geologist by training, and Keith Lyon are the founding partners here and they have invited me to sample a selection of miniature tasting versions of chef Jordi Rovira Segovia’s menu along with wines Keith has chosen himself. One wall of the restaurant is lined with bottles bearing simple price tags that belie their far from simple prices.
We eat tapas of baby squid, tomato and coriander along with Chardonnay from Bulgaria, a Château Burgozone 2012. The squid is excellently cooked, smoky and soft and the Chardonnay likes it.
Next up a dish that almost required a magnifying glass to view, this was of course just a taster though, of labneh, dried black olives, asparagus, citrus vinaigrette and fresh oregano with salmon roe. A Volubilia 2013 Moroccan Mourvèdre, Tempranillo, Vin Gris rosé was excellent and the food sharp and clear and the dried olives little nuts of concentrated flavour.
Suckling piglet belly with piquillo was fatty in a good way, melting into the mouth and served with a red that was slightly below room temperature with a slight chill to the bottle. Arnaud explaining that room temperature was often too warm, nowadays. Couvent des Jacobins 2005, a St Emilion Grand cru is a concentrated, darkly attractive wine already softening in its tannins but with still perhaps a few years left yet to achieve its full potential.
A piece of cod that passeth all understanding was next, fresh from Billingsgate and delightfully firm and well textured with slippery Romesco sauce, the wine Arnaud chose came from where he grew up, Dido 2013 from Montsant vineyards. It had nothing to do with the MOR made in Chelsea chanteuse fortunately and was intriguing in its ‘thick’ texture.
Arnaud rather bravely stuck with this white for the, much anticipated by me, Longhorn Onglet, served rare as it simply has to be, from a fifth generation butcher in Chipping Barnet. A superb piece of meat, one that I regard as the best steak of all. Dido accompanied it (sic) very well indeed and I could have eaten a great deal more of it given half a chance.
Finally, a deconstructed Vinothec Cheesecake made with cheese named after Jean Anselme Brillat-Savarin. A feast of fats it was as lush as could be and for once I was happy at the reduced portion size. Arnaud served his last bottle of 1971 Rivesaltes, a part of France I remember only vaguely because while I was there I drank Rivesaltes out of litre containers filled from converted petrol pumps – happy days, if now very blurred ones, of being almost constantly drunk and making expeditions in the dead of night across the border to Spain to smuggle back soft drugs. It was thirty years ago, I hasten to add, so don’t go try writing me up for that bizness, seen?
Anyway we downed some espressos from one man band artisan roaster, Francis Bradshaw and I rolled out into the night in search of a kebab, well as I keep saying, they were very small portions.
You may not feel that trundling out to what still feels rather like the ends of the earth to eat is worth the trip, but I feel you should reconsider. The food was excellent, the wines clearly well chosen and with plenty more to choose from as well. And you get a chance to thwack golf balls into space, what more do you want?
Pepper Big
Down in ‘Fannet’ food has taken a space age turn. Nick Harman visits the UK’s biggest greenhouse complex to find how our red, yellow and green peppers are produced.
I can’t get rid of it; ‘This is Planet Earth’ by Duran Duran keeps looping around my brain as we wait for security clearance to enter the world of Thanet Earth. Damn those catchy 80s popsters and their irresistible ‘hooks’.
I soon lose the beat though as we round a corner and I get my first sight of the massive greenhouses covering the rough equivalent of four Heathrow terminals, or 40 football pitches if that helps. Very, very big, is perhaps the best way of putting it.
Before the greenhouses fell to earth all this land in Thanet, the bit of the UK that includes Margate, Ramsgate and Broadstairs, grew brassicas – cauliflowers mostly -which apparently ‘smelt a fair bit.’
Now four clean, bright and odour-free greenhouses occupy the space instead. They stand on compacted earth with as little concrete as possible used in their construction. This is what modern farming looks like; efficient, virtually waste-free, ecologically as sound as possible and with no mud or muck about.
Green is good
The greenhouses are each used for specific crops; two for tomatoes and one each for cucumbers and sweet peppers. It’s the pepper house I’m visiting to meet Pleun van Malkenhorst the managing director of the operation for Rainbow UK, which is a Dutch company, you probably won’t be surprised to learn.
The Dutch of course have been growing things in large greenhouses for a long time, but now by growing peppers hydroponically in the UK they cut down on the expense of shipping them to our hungry market, as well as the pollution involved in mass transport.
Pleun’s job is not that of any ordinary farmer. He gets around his 20 acre farm by bike, not tractor, and with around a quarter of a million producing plants to look after he has to be a smart scientist to keep everything happy.
Computer systems make sure nutrients like potassium, nitrogen, calcium, iron and magnesium are precisely delivered to the plants, along with carbon dioxide. Systems outside keep an eye on the temperature, the strength of sunlight and even the wind and where it’s coming from in order to work the vents efficiently. And uniquely Pleun also has to buy and sell energy.
Generating no waste
‘Every day I look at the price of gas and electricity,’ he explains. ‘We use gas engines to generate our own electricity, when gas is cheaper to buy. Any surplus electricity we produce is put into the national grid, which we get paid for. So it’s a balancing act. We want to consume as little energy as possible, as well as resources, and also waste as little as possible. The heat from the engines warms the greenhouses and the carbon dioxide produced is pumped to the plants.’
Plants of course love carbon dioxide and turn it into oxygen, as we all remember from our school biology lessons. The massive glass roofs channel up to 50 million gallons of rainwater a year into giant storage tanks, free water that’s used to carry the nutrients to the base of each plant sitting in its rockwool trough. Any water that runs off from the plants is captured, filtered and used again.
Nothing bugs the crop
By growing the pepper plants up strings, Pleun achieves an average height of 12 feet and they’re producing fruit all the time they are growing. Green (unripe) peppers and the fully ripe red and yellows. Teams are picking regularly and reporting back via terminals stationed around the rows on yield and any problems. Like bugs.
‘We use pesticides only as a very last resort,’ says Pleun bending down to show me a sachet attached to the base of a stem. ‘This contained ‘good insects’ like wasps and macrolophus, which prey on the ‘bad insects’ like whitefly, caterpillars and spider mites. In this way we don’t need to spray, nature balances it out for us.’
And of course the generous light levels in this part of the UK do the rest, delivering the ultraviolet and, in the summer, the warmth too. Production of peppers runs from March to November and then the exhausted plants go to compost and the whole thing gets ready to start again.
The peppers that come off the plant are uniform in size, shiny, healthy, traffic-light bright and crisp and juicy. Not just the familiar Bell Peppers but also Large Pointed Peppers and Baby Peppers too. They’re packed by a state of the art operation on site and dispatched to supermarkets swiftly and efficiently.
Taste test
And do they taste good? Over at the East Kent College Cookery School the students are away for the summer break so chef Guus Vredenburgtakes me into the teaching kitchen and we knock up some simple pepper dishes: Stir fried orange pepper with chicken, Pepper salad with goat cheese and walnuts, Gazpacho and Peperonata.
They all taste great and I would defy anyone to tell the difference between a pepper grown in the greenhouse and one grown in a field, even assuming you could find the latter in the UK and which hadn’t been flown miles to get to your mouth
As we ate I learnt that sweet peppers are remarkably healthy and apparently contain a lot of vitamin C, more than almost any other fruit or vegetable. In addition to vitamin C, sweet peppers also contain vitamins E, B1 and B2. They also provide essential minerals such as calcium, sodium and iron and a pointed sweet pepper contains a lot of folic acid. All these facts, as well as more recipes can be found at the colourfultaste website.
So next time you’re buying peppers, look for the ones that have travelled from Thanet Earth. They’re eco-friendly, tasty and not at all alien.
Emirate Eating. The Dubai Food Festival
‘Oh Dubai it’s all bling and excess isn’t it, nothing to do, see or eat there’‘ Nick Harman finds the naysayers couldn’t be more wrong.
Red, red, wine, it goes to my he- eh -eh ed’, except that it doesn’t here because neither red nor white wine are an option at The Big Grill in Muslim Dubai.
However I do have a compensatory stacked plateful of grilled lamb, Lebanese mashawis and other food treats to gnaw on as I tap my toes to the bland white reggae beat from the UB40 boys up on stage.
The Big Grill at Dubai Emirates Golf course is a 2-day celebration of everything BBQ; packed with BBQ cook-offs, burger eating competitions and BBQ picnics amidst live performances from world-class artists and local DJs. It’s not perhaps what people usually expect from Dubai, but that’s the point,
It’s all part of the Dubai Food Festival, a new idea for a city more famous for soaring tower blocks, supercars on the street and money, money money than it is for food.
Dubai is a massively multicultural city of course and the food available reflects that. Over 200 cuisines are being represented at the Festival, which takes in everything from shipping containers at ‘Beach Canteen’ – where I ate locally caught fish while the setting sun pinkly illuminated the amazing Burj al Arab hotel – to the highest of high end restaurants. Whatever your pocket, you can afford to eat widely and well. Read more…
Time for tea at 300 year old Twinings
60.2 billion cups of tea are drunk a year, many of them by Nick Harman personally. He goes down to visit 300 year old Twinings Tea in Hampshire to discover more about their take on our national drink.
‘Shlooooooooooooorpppp!’ It’s a very loud sound and seems odd coming from Philippa Thacker who for the last ten minutes has been, dare I say, behaving in a perfectly ladylike fashion. ‘Slurrrrrrp’ she goes again and then accurately directs a jet of brown tea into her spittoon on wheels.
‘You don’t have to spit it out of course,’ she says, ‘it’s not like wine tasting where you’re avoiding the alcohol, but if you don’t spit then by the end of a tasting you will have drunk an awful lot of tea!’
As a Master Blender it’s part of Philippa’s job to ensure that each box of Twining’s black ‘breakfast tea’ or ‘everyday tea’ you buy in the shops is of the same quality and taste as the last and is true to the secret blend, which can contain up to forty separate teas.
Unlike wine, which is a once a year crop, tea is picked every day with the leaf quality varying every time so it’s the blenders’ job to assess each shipment of tea that comes in and create the correct blend for sale. Each blender has his or her own unique tasting spoon engraved with their name, a sweet touch that is so quintessentially British. Read more…
Taks for the memory – a food trip to Gothenburg
A mastery of Swedish, gained from watching TV crime dramas, means Nick Harman is well prepared for a great food weekend in Gothenburg
I’m using it all the time since arriving in Sweden; ‘tack’ means ‘thanks’ in English. It’s the only Swedish word that TV has taught me and it’s coming in handy as I try to eat in as many places in Gothenburg as I can.
There is great food to be found all over when wandering the streets of Sweden’s second city, just under two hours flight from the UK. No longer is it all about the herring and the meatballs, although those are still done very well.
At lunchtime in a small square I come acrossStrömmingsluckan(Magasinsgatan), a food truck dispensing fried herrings served with parsley butter, mash and lingonberries, to people of all ages.
It’s a traditional dish, the young man at the fryer, Thomas, tells me from behind his high counter, and much beloved by all. I stand eating and talking to him as he serves fast and efficiently, the sweetly sharp lingonberries cutting the oiliness of the fish perfectly, while the mash is a billowy sponge for all those juices.
It’s not fine dining but it is fun dining. For a taste of something special I head off that evening to Kock & Vin(Viktoriagatan 12). Here there is no menu, you only get what’s in season with a focus on the region’s superb fish and shellfish. The West Sweden themed cooking here from Head Chef Johan Björkman is artistic and creative and it’s no wonder it’s one of Gothenburg’s premier Michelin starred restaurants, but of course it has prices to match.
For something cheaper there is the ‘Fish Church’Feskekôrka(Rosenlundsvägen). Inside this ancient fish market is the small Restaurang Gabriel run by Johan Malm who took over the restaurant founded by his father.
Johan is an imposing presence with his bushy hipster beard and big boots, but he’s a friendly giant and while we drink bitter, powerful espressos and the kitchen sets up for lunch, he explains that with all the remarkable fish stalls downstairs he can always give his customers the freshest of the day’s catch, all cooked with beguiling simplicity. ‘The cold water around Sweden really develops the flavour of local fish,’ he says and swallowing a local oyster I find he is absolutely right.
Of course all this fish can get a bit much so I head over toGourmetkorv (Södra Larmgatan 6). This tiny hole in the wall sells over fifty kinds of sausages to be greedily eaten on the spot with mash, sauce and rather curiously, a slice of baguette that’s been squashed in a sandwich toaster. The average price is £7, including a can of soft drink, and it’s a bargain in this town, especially when you consider that all their sausages are made locally and contain between 85-95% meat and no additives.
Needing some art therapy I found the Art Museum was well worth a visit, especially as the handyGothenburg City Card I was rocking gives entrance to this and many other museums and galleries, as well as travel on buses, trams and ferries.
The restaurant next door to the museum, Mr P (Gotaplatsen 6) was the real masterpiece though. I expected the usual tatty museum café bad food and screaming children, but instead found a wonderfully modern place full of cool locals serving inventive fusion food from a terse small plate menu. Steak tartar with trout roe strewn with a crisp layer of sliced radish was a textural and taste delight and the local impossibly sweet squid with tomato, chilli, lime and avocado was stunning.
In Sweden afternoons are always ‘fika’ time, a coffee break taken very seriously. Over in the pretty old Haga district with its grid of streets of ancient wooden houses and bohemian shops, there are a myriad of coffee houses serving the cinnamon roll that it’s almost obligatory to eat at fika time. At Café Kringlan, (Haga Nygata 13) the home made roll is a welcome sugar rush which, combined with the heavy caffeine hit, had me ready to take on even more walking and eating.
By the time I’d reluctantly left town I had also feasted on superb saltwater and freshwater crayfish, had my fill of quality meatballs, dodged death from a really quite unbelievable number of Volvos, and yet barely scratched the food surface. So tack you Gothenburg for all the food, I’ll be back to dive deeper soon.
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London calling!
San Sebastian may be the unofficial food capital of the world, but for three days this year it went more than a little London. Nick Harman gets a taste of Gastronomika 2013
If this coach goes over the edge and into the sea, a lot of London restaurants are going to have problems next week.
Jose Pizarro is three rows in front, Fergus Henderson appears to have nodded off in his seat in the middle, Nuno Mendes is peering pensively past his fringe and out the window, Junya Yamasaki of Koya is with the bad boys at the back, Bubbledogs/Kitchen Table lads are all chatting excitedly and the Clove Club are members of the happy band. On board are plenty of other brit chefs who are bywords in the blogs, plus a couple of food writers and at least one of those is desperately trying to remember if he’s been rude about any of these chefs recently.
We’re barreling through the darkness en route to a mass dinner at Elkano, a restaurant in the seaside fishing village of Getaria about 24km from San Sebastian (Donostia). We’re going to eat turbot-rodaballo. It’s a simple dish, a whole turbot, or in this case about twenty turbots, cooked on enormous oakwood fired grills outside the entrance.
Nothing more than salt, cider vinegar and oil is added and the fish is served in three defined parts – the bottom side that never sees the sun, the top half with its dark skin and, on the side, a rack of gelatinous bones. The texture and taste contrasts are clear and defined and you drag the local bread through the glorious mess your plate soon becomes and you greedily suck the skin off those bones. Outside, roasting in the heat from the grills ourselves, we gather for cigarette breaks and agree that it is possibly the best fish we’ve eaten anywhere
It’s certainly a long way in style from tweezers and Thermomix cooking; it’s basic Basque and the assembled chefs lap up the simplicity, so refreshing after a day of food art. We’re all in town for Gastronomika 2013, three days of learning and lecturing and this year there’s a strong Brit presence because the festival is flying the London flag, literally, because London has come to Spain, innit.
You’d think San Sebastian, a city that has become a byword for great food would be too cool to like London grub, but far from it. Outside the conference center, a modern structure next to the old town and perched like a giant bathing hut just a few yards from the beach, James Knappett has set up a food truck selling his eponymous Bubbledogs. Within a few hours it proves so popular they have to create a zig zag queuing system and locals and attendees of all ages happily stuff hot dogs into their mouths while dribbling sauce on their shirts just like any London food blogger.
Inside they’ve seen Heston open the show and heard from Jonny Lake of the Fat Duck and Ashley Palmer-Watts of Dinner, they will go on to see Anna Hansen(The Modern Pantry) cook fusion, smell the spices of Atul Kochar (Benares), marvel at the erratic Lundun accent of that man Knappett and watch Jose Pizarro (Pizarro’s) and Cesar Garcia (Iberica) demo. Over the next few days Nuno Mendes (Viajante) will also demonstrate, as well as Fergus Henderson (St John) and Tom Kerridge (Hand & Flowers), the latter to be found wandering about backstage hugely happy with the success of his book, TV show and now UK’s Best Restaurant Award.
Attending these events is both fascinating and frustrating. You get to see, and smell, some remarkable dishes being created but you never get to taste any. The hall is hot and a bit stuffy and during the Spanish chefs’ performances you wear translation headsets which make your ears hurt and sometmes deliver Spanglish. For the chefs it’s about seeing what could be on the menu stylewise next, to see heros in action and go out on the lash in the evening. For me it’s work and pleasure combined but you can only watch so many demos.
Luckily there is the food Disneyworld of San Sebastian to explore. So many tabernas, so little time, and picking the right ones isn’t easy. You peer in and try to judge by spotting who are locals and who are tourists. The latter are easily identifiable, they are taking endless pictures and are filling large plates with pinchos as if at a wedding buffet. With a shudder you withdraw.
Some bars in the beautiful old town have got lazy and serve bad food but get a good guide, and I recommend John Warren of San Sebastian Food, and you will be steered right. In San Sebastian the good and the bad and the ugly are not fixed, so you need the most up to date info if you’re not to blow your euros on the wrong pinchos.
John is scathing about some tabernas and waxes eloquent about others, particularly in the Gros area of town an area little visited by tourists. Here he deftly steers me from place to place, drinking the sparkling txakoli wine, very dry and pleasantly low in alcohol, as we go, while I wonder how much more food I can take before exploding like Mr Creosote.
I also wonder if I am going to get scurvy. John assures me that in their homes the locals eat as many green vegetables as anyone else, but in the tabernas the closest you come to green veg is an olive. If it’s not fatty or fried or both, the Spanish don’t want it. Here in Spain it’s best to forget about your five a day and just concentrate on trying to get just one a day.
Back at the conference centre it’s good to see London being hailed as the most exciting food city in the world. The talk is all of our multi-cultural melting pot and how, having never really had much of a cuisine to defend, we have been omnivorous in our welcome to everyone else’s. Yes we fall for crazes rather too easily, and fall prey to silly hype occasionally, but we keep our eyes open as well as our mouths.
Maybe next year we’ll be the ones holding our own Gastronomika, that’s if all the chefs made it back safely home of course.
Photos taken with the HTC One Mini
Tasting a bit of a different Tenerife
Tenerife has always been overshadowed by a reputation for out of control young Brits heading for A&E as fast as cheap beer can take them. But stay away from those spots and there’s an island with history, culture, wine and of course food. Nick Harman splashes down
Who needs a gym? I’m working up quite a sweat in Bodegas Monje restaurant, furiously pounding green peppers, garlic, chili, coriander and almonds and I’m sure my right bicep has perceptibly grown in the last five minutes.
I’m making Mojo, a classic Tenerife sauce, under the watchful eye of the chef and also, I’m guessing, his mother. Her clucking and tutting is interspersed with bursts of terse Spanish and I mutter ‘si’ and ‘bueno’ through teeth clenched with effort. I have absolutely no idea what she’s saying but whatever it is I think the safest thing to do is agree.
I’m told Tenerifians are tough but friendly people, but then living on a volcano probably does that to a person. At 3.718m high the witch’s hat of dormant Mount Teide looms over the island and can be seen from almost everywhere, it’s tonsure of cloud contrasting against the black rock and the blue sky. Travel by cable car to its highest reachable point and it’s cold and getting colder. In winter the slopes will have snow and it’s possible to sunbathe and ski in the same day.
The volcano slopes aside, there are just two seasons in Tenerife: hot and not so hot, which is why Bodegas Monje can grow excellent wine like their unique Monje Tacoronte-Acentejo Tinto Tradicional from grapes grown on vines that were never affected by Phylloxera. It’s also why the island’s tourist trade benefits all year round from hordes of Germans, Dutch, and of course Brits, looking for virtually guaranteed warmth and sunshine.
And booze. You can’t deny that some parts of the island have become synonymous with tattooed lads auditioning for Channel 4 documentaries. But why go there? Literally why? There’s plenty more of the island to explore and you don’t have to see a single St George’s flag fluttering over someone’s belly.
I’m staying in the capital Santa Cruz. The Iberostar Hotel Grand Mencey is what a hotel should always be; it’s not a bland block of concrete but a kind of castle. It’s cool marble interior bathes you in fresh air as soon you walk in, the central courtyard acting as a kind of chimney funnelling hot air up and out just as the architects no doubt intended when they designed this hotel in 1950 and before the advent of ubiquitous air conditioning.
Not that the hotel hasn’t moved with the times. A recent full refit has kept the old school charm, but modernised where it matters. There’s a state of the art gym for guests and a plush spa too. The rooms are large but restrained and contemporary, the WiFi is powerful and you can plug your MP3 player into the room system for tunes while you shower. Balconies vary from standard size to ones you could hold an after-party on and most look out over the pretty gardens and pool. I couldn’t find a kettle and tea making kit in my room, though. Perhaps it was just an oversight or perhaps the Lipton’s bag on a string has gone forever.
Tea and mojo apart, and I think I may have lost the latter up in that restaurant, I’m here to also try Iberostar’s latest culinary wheeze. They’ve built a smart cooking classroom and are inviting top chefs to show and tell food fans how it’s done. Then in the evening, as part of the deal, the chef cooks a full tasting menu with paired wines for the private room.
The demo is fascinating stuff; headphones deliver non Spanish speakers a fluent simultaneous translation. A good selection of Michelin starred women chefs are lined up to appear here into 2014 and today’s chef, the ebullient holder of two Michelin stars at her Galician restaurant El Stacion, Beatriz Sotelo, is a natural teacher. She talks about her beloved Galicia and its superb seafood and sends out tasters as she works and we fall upon them greedily and get even hungrier for the evening meal.
Which turns out to be very good. Highlights for me were the razor clams, fiercely grilled until open and dressed with citrus and olive oil, and a clever dish of wataki beef and wasabi cream. Add to that a plate featuring Galicia’s shellfish crown jewel, the strange looking percebe, and it was a meal to really remember.
The next day, from Iberostar’s central location, I set off to wander the town of Santa Cruz. It’s a port and has no beaches as such, but it does have the shady Garcia Sanabria parknext door to the hotel with its impressive fountains and sculptures, as well as a preserved old town with colonial buildings and tempting restaurants that reassuringly have no English menus on display.
Food here is much as you would find in any part of Spain, but some dishes are special such as Canary Island potatoes. These grow all year round and are cooked, barely covered in water and piled with salt, until the pot is almost dry. With the salt only slightly penetrating their skins, and topped with red or green mojo sauce, they are simple and delicious.
Another treat and which can be found in Mercado de Nuestra Señora de África, Santa Cruz’s busy food market a place well worth an hour or two’s browsing, are the fish that the locals are nicknamed after, the Chicharrero, as well the local salty, strong cheeses which partner with the local wines very well.
A short ride from Santa Cruz is Puerto Santa Cruz with its beaches of black sand. It’s a more touristy area but pay to enter the Lago Martianez and you’ll find interlocking pretty pools perfect for swimming and sunbathing and all child friendly.
Large men lie around like walruses in those tiny trunks that only Spanish men have the guts to get away with, mostly because that’s what provides a semi-concealing overhang.
But that really is the only sight you might want to avoid in Tenerife; from wide views to small delights, from whale and dolphin watching to mojo making, from wine tasting to walking in the Teide National Park, the island has plenty to interest and excite those not on an In Betweeners kind of holiday.
And with winter coming up in the UK, just four hours travel in a plane will have you annoying everyone back home with pictures of blue skies, black beaches and your muscular mojo.
Foodepedia were guests of Iberostar. Rooms start from €40 pp per night for a double basic, to €113pp per night for a garden view suite.
Easyjet, Monarch and British Airways all fly to Tenerife.
For further information on Tenerife go to www.webtenerife.co.uk
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The Dysart Arms
135 Petersham Rd Richmond, Surrey TW10 7AA www.thedysartarms.co.uk
I’ve walked past the Dysart Arms lots of times over the years on my way to Petersham Nursery, not that I’d go to that place now, not since Skye Gyngell left. Her long face looking out of the kitchen window like a disconsolate horse was never very cheering but the food was always interesting, if hellishly overpriced. Now it’s just hellishly overpriced..
The Dysart Arms is an old arts and crafts style pub that’s a pub no longer. Like so many it found it couldn’t survive on beer alone and so has changed hands and gone gourmet. A resulting internal refurb suffers a bit from the curse of Farrow & Ball, but they’ve resisted the temptation to paint absolutely everything cream. This means that it doesn’t feel like you’re sitting in branch of Daylesford Organic, a place that sends me into a frenzy of hatred even just thinking about it.
Large flagstones, naked wood tables, grand fireplaces and original leaded windows all create a feeling of cosiness. To add to the happiness the sun is streaming in ‘like butterscotch’ (thank you Joni) while the staff are breezing efficiently about and helping me chase wasps back out the window as I have a pathetic fear of wasps. The set menu is a very reasonable £19.95 for three courses, but we’ve heard head chef Kenneth Culhane is a bit good, a Roux scholar no less, so we hit the a la carte to see if the kitchen can cut it.
Little pre-nibbles that are, in young people’s eyes as naff as napkins and cutlery, are quite excellent, as is the soda bread. We wolf these down and wait for starters proper which immediately set our happy bells ringing when they arrive.
My veal sweetbread is exquisitely cooked, a little crusty on the outside and billowing on the inside. A black truffle vinaigrette blows heavenly wafts across the palate, while fresh almonds deliver a contrapuntal punch. The juices are dribbled and smeared, which again some people dislike seeing but remains the best way of making plates look good while spreading flavours around.
P has scallops, perhaps not on the surface an exciting choice but the squid ink dumplings, are clever and texturally interesting and deliver a colour contrast while the scallops themselves are well seared, plump and fresh. An insolia veloute comes as foam, again a bit old hat for some but it does deliver the flavours very efficiently to the taste buds even if it isn’t fashionable.
Service is relaxed but they know which dishes we are having, this may seem oxymoronic but it’s surprising how many good restaurants still do the embarrassing plate shuffle at table when all it takes is a decent memory, or even a piece of paper, to get it right first time.
P’s main is a visual stunner, so much so that I feel compelled to get the camera out again, but we are in a spot that’s clear of other customers and I am quick as a flash (without a flash).
The iridescent green of the herbal kaffir lime and green chilli sauce is hallucinogenic and sets off the beautifully crisped stone bass on its bed of sweet and nutty celeriac very well. P reports that the whole dish tastes sublime; so it’s not all presentation there is real method at work here as well, but then of course you’d expect no less from anyone who’s been in spatula range of a Roux.
My Wiltshire Heritage beef had been treated with loving respect so as to be properly pink and well rested. With this kind of quality ingredient you really just have to exercise old fashioned skill and resist the temptation to rush.
With my expert eye I quickly identified beetroot on the plate, then checking the menu discovered it was in fact heritage carrot, carrots once always being purple until the comparatively recent orange variety took over. Cut into disks and batons the carrot had the sweetness of old that got rather bred out along with the colour and so was captivating. The flavour of the meat set against the miso mustard sauce, rather an inspired sauce I felt, and the dusty sourness of sumac, one of my favourite spices was excellent.
As with my starter I was drinking the recommended bottled beer not wine, in this case a Goose Island IPA, and it was a revelation just how enjoyable a craft beer can be with well-crafted food. The joy of being able to take a good swallow, and not just sip, can’t be overstated.
We shared a Valrhona Jivra chocolate and praline bar partnered with fashionable salted caramel ice cream and grue de caco for dessert. I am not much for sweet things and I don’t really ‘get’ salted caramel, but this was again an elegant and enjoyable dish. Even better was the selection of cheeses, small but perfectly chosen and perfectly ripe.
Days before going to the Dysart Arms I was referring to it as the Dyson Arms. God knows why, because, as we found, it certainly doesn’t suck. See what I did there? Ah comedy. Seriously though, best lunch of the year, hands down.
Mango Tree and Pan Chai at Harrods
87-135 Brompton Road, Knightsbridge, London, SW1X 7XL www.harrods.com
‘That fish is extremely rare, those three are on the endangered list and this one here is extinct as of ten minutes ago.’ The man itemising the fish on our sushi/sashimi platter didn’t really say that, but with the cost of the board coming in at £120 for two it wouldn’t have been entirely surprising if he had.
You don’t eat cheap in Harrods Food Halls; from steaks to sashimi the prices make your eyes water and the water isn’t cheap either. It’s the kind of spending excess that makes dreadlocked white kids put wheelie bins through the windows of banks before heading off to pay £11 for a gourmet burger.
Looking at the menus at both Mango Tree, and its partner opposite Pan Chai, there is nothing that could be called averagely priced and yet at both places not only is every stool occupied there are people patiently queuing for their chance to whip out their wads. They are mostly tourists, many are Chinese and all are obviously not short of a bob or two.
It’s an unusual spot to have lunch, the Harrods Food Hall. It’s always a frantically busy place and there are no tables at almost all the food outlets, instead you eat at a bar. Why don’t people wander off to find somewhere cheaper, less crowded in the area? The answer is probably to do with comfort zones. Well-heeled tourists feel safe in Harrods, whereas walking the mean streets of Knightsbridge might feel a bit edgy.
There is no point moaning about the prices though; after all if you can’t afford to pay you shouldn’t have sat down. So J and I barely turn a hair when at Mango Tree we find six dim sum priced at £30 (including a bowl of Tom Yum soup), instead we just adopt an insouciant pose and raise our glasses of £15 champagne to two girls who are eyeing us up as possible sugar daddies. Luckily they cannot see my TK Max trainers.
Is the food any good? Well chef in charge for MT Harrods and Pan Chai is Ian Pengelley, who is also chef at the gigantic Gilgamesh in Camden, and he’s a seasoned Western Thai pro. I’ve always liked his food and style and here he has a top team and a budget for the best ingredients.
The Tom Yum soup is rich and fiery just as it should be, four plump prawns are playing submarines at the bottom and shimeji mushrooms are patrolling the surface. I’ve had lots of Tom Yums and this is as good as the best I’ve had, at least in the UK. Coughing on the chilli does not help with our insouciant poses, though.
The dim sum, a plate of fried and plate of steamed are very good, although I am no expert on dim sum. I know what I like and let somebody else count the pleats. From the steamed selection the foie gras and scallop is quite divine and the prawn and chive also excellent.
We eat everything in two bites each, dunking in the soy sauce in between to eke out the pleasure. From the fried selection I especially like the juicy prawn entwined in a bird’s nest of fried noodle, the mix of crunch and yielding flesh is perfect. Duck spring roll is rich and filling and the taro and chicken croquette also stood out.
Over at Pan Chai dry ice is steaming away on our fish platter and you half expect a bloke playing a twin-necked guitar to appear out of it. The sushi and sashimi are all beautifully ‘plated’ and while I soon lose track of what is actually on the platter the menu reminds me: Foie gras, sea urchin, salmon, tuna belly, sea bass, tuna, salmon roe, grilled eel, jumbo sweet shrimp, scallop, yellow tail, tamago and spicy salmon roll. The fresh wasabi is just hot enough to spike without making my nose explode.
Each chopstick tweezered piece demands slow contemplation, as you are metaphorically sucking on a £5 note. Service is discreet yet cheerful which is can’t be easy as some of the rich diners act very brusquely indeed.
You can if you want eat a bit cheaper at both places with some menu savvy, although don’t go for the Wagyu beef curry unless you have £60 to spare.
And while some will say you can get cheaper, and arguably better, versions of all this in Soho, well the answer is of course you probably can but that’s really not the point. Just about everything in Harrods costs more than it would anywhere else; it’s not Bluewater after all.
If you have a burning desire to spend some serious cash in what must be the most iconic store in the world, and you want to get something very decent and decadent for your money, then pull up a stool at either Mango Tree or Pan Chai and adopt a happy smile
Walking with sheep
A 180 km trek is nothing to the sheep of the Lot Valley during their annual Transhumance. Nick Harman pulls on his boots and falls in behind
‘They aren’t moutons, they are brebis,’ explains shepherd Frédéric Lestang in the heavily accented, semi-patois French of the Lot valley. As we talk his dogs fall back through our legs and chase along any straggler ‘ewes’ from the 700 strong flock we’re driving down a narrow stone-walled path. The ewes pack together tightly as the walls funnel them in but they maintain their pace, clearly happy to be on the move.
Which is just as well as they’ve just begun a journey of fifteen days, one which will see them leave behind their winter pastures in the Lot valley and ascend 180 kilometres to the dormant volcanic slopes of the Cantal. Here fresh grass and wild flowers watered by the melted snow will feed them summer long while their pasture back in the Lot burns away in the heat. Frederic himself will live in a ski lodge alongside his flock until late August before they all descend in time for the ewes to give birth to their lambs, the ‘product’ that makes the money.
Behind us is a motley crew of walkers of all ages, skipping as they try to avoid the natural waste products dropped by the flock ahead of them. This is the Transhumance 2013, a sustainable and ancient practice newly restored to life that anyone can join in with for a morning, a day or even the whole fifteen day journey.
We’d left our initial starting place, the little village of Espedaillac, to the sound of accordions and long speeches and fuelled by wine, beer and chunks of barbecued lamb. The brebis had surged out of their pen like a woolly tsunami, all baa’ing loudly and clanking the bells they wear. Brilliant late afternoon sunlight soon replaced the earlier clouds and we began to regret wearing so many clothes as the walking became more demanding.
Each stage of the transhumance is calculated to be about right for an averagely healthy person as well as for the brebis and each ends with a welcome party in the village stop. After eating and drinking a coach is provided to take the walkers back to their cars. All walkers can book a stage ahead of time and be helped with a selection of B&B, hotels and gites.
The Transhumance project has only been running a few years but already it’s a great success, an example of how different government, tourist and agricultural groups can work together to create an event that is good for everyone and is great fun too. I spoke with village mayors along the route, as a well as with shepherds and fellow walkers, and the mood was consistently upbeat; one couple had even come all the way from Colorado, USA to take part.
Walkers can take time out from the stages whenever they want to visit the remarkable medieval towns and villages dotted all over the Lot. Places such as St Cirque La Popie, a town perched as if contemplating suicide over a steep drop into the Lot valley below, its streets and small shops populated by self-professed artists. Andre Breton had a house here and the views he had down into the valley are giddying, as no doubt were the surrealist friends who came to visit him.
Also nearby is Figeac, another of the transhumance stops, with more lanes snaking past houses built back in the distant past. But if all this antiquity gets a bit much though there is the Champollion museum, a modern masterpiece created from the shell of the house where the man who cracked the code of the Rosetta Stone was born.
Everywhere in the region you can eat well; this is the land of duck, saffron, cheese and in season, gorgeous truffles and ceps. I started my mornings with the local Rocamadour goats cheese drizzled with honey, a treat only to be enjoyed in the region as it’s best eaten at just six days old and doesn’t travel.
But I certainly travelled and after a few pleasant hours of walking on that first evening, taking in lungful’s of clear air filled with the aroma of emerging leafy growth, wild garlic and herbs, we crested a rise and suddenly we were on the edge of a drop with a view that had me stepping back involuntarily. Far down below us we could see the monastery of a village, shrunk to train set size by the distance.
‘That’s where we spend the night,’ said Frederic as the flock began the almost vertical descent down string-thin paths used for centuries by pilgrims on their way to Santiago de Compostela. The path was soon churned up by the sheep ahead and we found ourselves careering downhill slightly out of control, boots sliding on boulders as round as marbles, frantically waving our arms and grabbing onto trees, as well as each other, to remain upright.
After fifteen minutes we landed, marching proudly behind what I was now beginning to consider ‘our flock’ and delivering hearty ‘bonsoirs’ to French villagers as they emerged from their houses in the gathering twilight to see us pass by. The younger ones gawked in amazement and the old ‘mamies’ and ‘papies’ smiled broadly, no doubt remembering seeing the transhumance back in their youth.
In the monastery grounds a traditional band had struck up old songs, the barbecue was grilling lamb and chicken and stalls were serving the local delicacy ‘pastis’, a saffron pastry not the drink, which was being quickly sold to hungry walkers. I sat myself down gratefully on a bench by a trestle table and greedily filled my plate with lamb chops, their fat crispy and rich and the meat beautifully pink and moist.
A large plastic cup of red wine from Cahors to the south made it a meal that was the equal of anything I’ve eaten anywhere. Sometimes the meal that you’ve earned with your muscles tastes better than anything else in the world.
I rested my weary legs, felt healthier than I had in an age and began looking forward to getting back to my hotel, and then next morning after a good breakfast with that goats cheese figuring strongly, getting back on the trail and walking behind the brilliant brebis once more.
The Transhumance will take place again next year www.transhumance.info/participez/
Thanks to www.tourisme-lot.com and www.valleedulot.com for their invaluable help
This piece appears on Foodepedia
Nick Harman 
